Three Centuries of Delight in British Butterflies

Rainbow Dust

A uniquely personal book about butterflies and about the people who love them – which, surely, is most of us

A scholarly and captivating excursion into the history of natural history, further enlivened by vivid portraits of some of the butterfly enthusiasts of the past

Never again will this reader, at least, take a butterfly for granted… Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, Rainbow Dust is a truly marvellous book

In Peter Marren Britain’s butterflies have found their champion. Is Rainbow Dust worth a flutter? Oh, absolutely

[A] superbly distilled statement on our national obsession with butterflies

Whether you know a lot or a little about butterflies, this is an essential read

A thoroughly researched and passionate celebration of fragile butterflies

A celebration of the role that butterflies play in our imagination and cultural lives, examining our enduring fascination for a group of invertebrates that has inspired artists and writers

beautifully written... whatever you think you know about butterflies, prepare to be surprised and delighted

Marren unearths a fascinating tale […] his book is stunning: as stunning as the first Red Admiral on a June morning

Riveting. The most important book written about butterflies and their past and current status and their demise. The author is to be congratulated and my thanks to him for so many important memories

Peter Marren is a wildlife writer, journalist and authority on invertebrate folklore and names. His books include The New Naturalists, which won the Society for the History of Natural History’s Thackray Medal, Britain’s Rare Flowers, which won the Botanical Society of the British Isles’ Presidents’ Award. He won a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for work on Bugs Britannica.

Much more than just another field guide or a natural history of butterflies Rainbow Dust explores the ways in which butterflies delight and inspire us all, naturalists and non-naturalists alike. 
 
Beginning with the author's own experience of hunting and rearing butterflies as a boy, Peter Marren considers the special place of the butterfly in art, literature, advertising and science, and, latterly, our attempts to conserve them. 
 
Rainbow Dust takes in the controversy over collecting, the women who studied them and the curious details that lead to butterflies being feared as well as loved. This is a celebration of butterflies; one shot through with a sense of wonder but also of sorrow at what we are losing.

Bugs Britannica

From sea squirts to slugs to swallowtails, the third, fabulous and gorgeously illustrated book in Richard Mabey's series, a companion volume to the bestselling classics Flora Britannica and Birds Britannica.

Bugs Britannica is a unique natural history of British insects and other invertebrates. It is not a biological guide but a cultural one, seen through the eyes of writers, poets, musicians, artists and naturalists, as well as ordinary men and women, who have been fascinated and inspired by our 'small life'. Hence, like its distinguished predecessors, Flora Britannica and Birds Britannica, Bugs Britannica is concerned as much with us as with wildlife. It is a record of what we think about our bugs and how they have influenced and continue to influence our lives. 
 
Our guide covers the whole range of British invertebrates, from the simplest forms of animal life such as protozoa and sponges to the vast multitude of insects, spiders and shell life. It ranges from the mountaintops through woods, farms and fields to the soil and fresh water, right down to the shoreline and the shallow sea, and it also includes our houses and gardens. The only condition for selection is that the 'bug' must be familiar or in some other way important. This is a record of all the bugs for which we, as a society, feel admiration, concern, affection, fear, astonishment or wonder. In other words, if a species moves us in some way, it is here. If it is known only to a small group of specialists, look elsewhere. Bugs Britannica is a modern 'people's fauna', a portrait in encyclopedic detail of the teeming world of invertebrates seen through human eyes: an alternative natural history for a new age. 
 
Bugs Britannica completes a trilogy of books about the cultural dimensions of our wildlife. Like its predecessors, it includes observations, anecdotes and experiences from the public and from members of natural history and conservation societies. Unlike them, it cannot hope to include nearly every one of the approximately 40,000 British invertebrates. It does, however, include all those with a significant cultural profile, whether through folk-names, superstitions and beliefs (true or not), a social or domestic use, or a notable place in British art and literature. It includes bugs we seek to attract and those we fight expensive battles to remove. Above all, we have tried to bring our subjects to life in all their beautiful and bizarre glory. We hope the result will interest, amuse, delight and, perhaps occasionally, horrify the reader. No book in English has ever dealt so comprehensively with the manifold links between the British and the small beings at our doorsteps. Bugs Britannica is a testimony to why small life matters and about how it enriches our lives. 
 
A companion volume to Flora Britannica and Birds Britannica 
 
Covers more than 1000 species with nearly 400 colour images

Peter Marren is a wildlife writer, journalist and authority on invertebrate folklore and names. His books include The New Naturalists, which won the Society for the History of Natural History's Thackray Medal, Britain's Rare Flowers, which won the Botanical Society of the British Isles' Presidents' Award. He won a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for work on Bugs Britannica. 
 
Richard Mabey is 'Britain's greatest living nature writer' (The Times) and the force behind the Britannica series. Among his acclaimed publications are Food for Free, Gilbert White (Whitbread Biography of the Year) Nature Cure, Beechcombings and Flora Britannica, which won the British Book Awards' Illustrated Book of the Year and the Botanical Society of the British Isles' President's Award. He also collaborated with Mark Cocker on Birds Britannica.

As with Flora and Birds, Bugs is not a biological guide but a richly-illustrated cultural one, seen through the eyes of writers, musicians, artists and naturalists - from the great Tudor naturalist, Thomas Muffet (father of Little Miss Muffet) to Irvine Welsh's talking tapeworm in Filth - as well as contributions by ordinary men and women who are fascinated by creepy-crawlies of all kinds. 
 
The book is structured along a roughly evolving path, from simple cell life-forms - amoeba, worms, crustaceans (proof, say the authors, of 'just how far you can go on very little') - to bugs we all might recognise - spiders, butterflies, bees - and back into the water to meet molluscs and 'almost-fish'... The book works so triumphantly because author Peter Marren has examined bugs in the dusty corners of our houses and gardens as well as traversing mountains, lakes and fields. In addition to the fascinating habits of the bug world, he also includes the eccentric behaviour of the bug obsessives themselves. 
 
But of course, the true heroes of the book are the bugs themselves: the nimble-dicks, clock ladies and coffin-cutters. From the Boring Sponge (its official name!) to the Mermaid's Glove and Penis Worm, via the glamourous Dark Crimson Underwing and Ruby-Tailed Wasp - this rich compendium of bugs is a must not only for naturalists but for anyone who cares about the crawling, buzzing swarms at our feet.

Peter Marren

Peter Marren is the unsung hero of Britain's nature writers. His luminous prose sheds light on the forgotten corners of Britain's natural heritage – our diverse and sometimes bizarre flora – and his quest to see every single species in the country. He is the perfect guide, leading us along the highways and byways, through wayside and woodland, as he tracks down some of our rarest and most fascinating plants. Delightful.

Planting hunting here or abroad has always pulled in great enthusiasts. In Marren’s case it is a quiet enthusiasm, not academic, but companionable and intimate. He delivers easily all kinds of fascinating thoughts and information about the natural world… There is philosophy too. He understands that no ecosystem has a perfect moment to which it ought always to be restored. Environments change for better and worse, populations of plants and animals wax and wane. Ecology is flux. And does he find the ghost orchid? Well, he’s philosophical about that.

Peter Marren writes with such knowledge and affection for plants, and in such a modest and winning manner that few could help wanting to be a plant spotter in this image... If you already have the botany bug then you’ll want to read this book, and to own it so that you can dip into it in future years, but even for the confirmed non-botanist like myself, this is a very good read and one which makes me slightly uneasy about how much I have been missing by looking up rather than down and how blinkered is my view of the natural world.

A poignant reminder to us all to engage with the wild flower that grow around us

Wonderful... This book would appeal to anyone with an enthusiasm for wildflowers or an interest in the history of natural history

Jolly, quixotic and ends with real poignancy

This is superlative natural history storytelling – a joyful and unexpectedly moving celebration of overlooked beauty. Marren’s mission is wry, entertaining and deeply moral too, for he shows how these precious flowers will only endure if someone loves them

Patrick Barkham, author of The Butterfly Isles

Peter Marren’s charming, up hill and down dale odyssey to seek out Britain’s rarest wild flowers is made truly memorable by his astounding botanical knowledge, so comprehensive and yet so lightly-worn

Michael McCarthy, author of The Moth Snowstorm

My Search for all the Wild Flowers of Britain

**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN’S BEST BOOKS OF 2018** 
 
Join renowned naturalist Peter Marren on an exciting quest to see every species of wild plant native to Britain. 
 
The mysterious Ghost Orchid blooms in near darkness among rotting leaves on the forest floor. It blends into the background to the point of invisibility, yet glows, pale and ghostly. The ultimate grail of flower hunters, it has been spotted only once in the past twenty-five years. Its few flowers have a deathly pallor and are said to smell of over-ripe bananas. 
 
Peter Marren has been a devoted flower finder all his life. While the Ghost Orchid offers the toughest challenge of any wild plant, there were fifty more British species Peter had yet to see, having ticked off the first 1,400 rummaging in hedges, slipping down gullies and peering in peat bogs. But he set himself the goal of finding the remaining fifty in a single summer. As it turned out, the wettest summer in years. 
 
This expert and emotional journey takes Peter the length and the breadth of the British Isles, from the dripping ancient woods of the New Forest to the storm-lashed cliffs of Sutherland. He paddles in lakes, clambers up cliffs in mist and rain, and walks several hundred miles, but does he manage to find them all? 
 
Partly about plants, partly autobiography, Chasing the Ghost is also a reminder that to engage with wild flowers, all we need to do is look around us and enjoy what we see. 
 
Praise for Chasing the Ghost: 
 
‘Peter Marren is the unsung hero of Britain’s nature writers’ Stephen Moss, author of Dynasties 
 
‘Jolly, quixotic and ends with real poignancy’ Guardian 
 
 ‘A poignant reminder to us all to engage with the wild flowers that grow around us’ i Newspaper

Peter Marren

Praise for Chasing the Ghost

Peter Marren is the unsung hero of Britain's nature writers. His luminous prose sheds light on the forgotten corners of Britain's natural heritage – our diverse and sometimes bizarre flora – and ...

Planting hunting here or abroad has always pulled in great enthusiasts. In Marren’s case it is a quiet enthusiasm, not academic, but companionable and intimate. He delivers easily all kinds of fascinating ...

Peter Marren writes with such knowledge and affection for plants, and in such a modest and winning manner that few could help wanting to be a plant spotter in this image... If you already have the botany bu ...

Peter Marren is the unsung hero of Britain's nature writers. His luminous prose sheds light on the forgotten corners of Britain's natural heritage – our diverse and sometimes bizarre flora – and ...

Planting hunting here or abroad has always pulled in great enthusiasts. In Marren’s case it is a quiet enthusiasm, not academic, but companionable and intimate. He delivers easily all kinds of fascinating ...

Peter Marren writes with such knowledge and affection for plants, and in such a modest and winning manner that few could help wanting to be a plant spotter in this image... If you already have the botany bu ...

Peter Marren is the unsung hero of Britain's nature writers. His luminous prose sheds light on the forgotten corners of Britain's natural heritage – our diverse and sometimes bizarre flora – and ...

Planting hunting here or abroad has always pulled in great enthusiasts. In Marren’s case it is a quiet enthusiasm, not academic, but companionable and intimate. He delivers easily all kinds of fascinating ...

Peter Marren writes with such knowledge and affection for plants, and in such a modest and winning manner that few could help wanting to be a plant spotter in this image... If you already have the botany bu ...

Books by Peter Marren

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